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1 Womb and Workshop—Jeremiah Learns His Calling
- University of South Carolina Press
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12 1 Womb and Workshop—Jeremiah Learns His Calling Chapters 1, 46–51 Jeremiah was heir to a rhetorical tradition already ancient, one that had developed in the oldest known cultures of the Near East before it took place in Israel. Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1–20 Call and Commission We meet Jeremiah as he is constituted and committed as a prophet. The narrator of the book provides words of YHWH to and through Jeremiah extending over the last forty years of the monarchy, from King Josiah’s thirteenth year to King Zedekiah’s eleventh year, and past it: the era from 627 to 587 b.c.e. Whether Jeremiah was born or called in 627 does not much matter, since what counts is that he was already designated from the womb, whenever it was that he first prophesied. Jeremiah narrates his prophetic identity as his call catches up to him. By the time he learns he is a prophet, it’s old news for God, who called him from before birth. Jeremiah takes over from the narrator past the superscription of 1:1–3 to provide what we need to know. We hear layered speech: Jeremiah relates what God said to him, what he said in response, how he and God negotiated. Jeremiah interprets to us without telling us precisely how the information came to him, providing what we need to know—not so much the process between him and God but the result among three participants, the last set being his hearers and readers. So the layered language includes what God communicated to him, what he heard, what he tells us, all cuing our response. Focal is not his receiving but his reshaping what he heard for those who must be told it. We get a small scene from a play we are invited to watch (1:4–10), to participate in, one way or another. It comes in a familiar shape:1 an announcement of the assignment of prophetic identity; the demur of the recipient, who senses 13 jeremiah learns his calling all too well that he will never be adequate to the task; an override from the appointing deity, who resists the inadequacy claim; the deity’s counterargument: 2 And, Jeremiah relates, when that reply had been given, that YHWH acted, touching the prophet’s mouth saying, From here on their utterances will often be blended, nigh indistinguishable, shared. And, assigns God, your scope is nations and kingdoms, among whom you have six jobs to do: uproot [ntš], break down [ntṣ], destroy [’bd], overthrow [hrs], build [bnh], plant [nṭ‘]. Jeremiah might be a farmer or a builder, given the spheres from which language characterizing his job as prophet is drawn. He makes no reply to that charge. But Jeremiah at once must practice his new calling in two quick lessons (1:11–19): He is shown a first vision and asked about it; recognizing an almond blossom (šhaqed), he hears God pun on that image and say that God is watching (šhoqed) to do the word. Images are to be read carefully, read and then read more deeply as language shifts and curls. Congratulating the neophyte on his first prophetic words, God tosses him a second image to see and say: A boiling pot, turned from the north, facing southwest, apparently.3 God agrees it is so, explaining why: religious disloyalty, forsaking YHWH, turning to others—the basic charge to be adumbrated in this book. Presumably having managed the first challenge, God amplifies that just as they have done together—with Jeremiah first shown and seeing and then interpreting divinely disclosed events to us—so he must do continually , additionally, no matter the cost. Jeremiah again falls silent, having told and shown us his call and commission to be YHWH’s prophet. Jeremiah, having said is met by God, ; he is shown how it will work: words and images shared among God, prophet, readers/hearers. And, reassures God, The initial chapter is programmatic for the whole book—the encounter anticipating the life, we may add: a call, visions, vision reports, interpretation of what will come to be, with prose elaborating and clarifying poetry.4 But even more programmatic is the intersection of prophet and deity, with the prophet both reporting the powerful language of the deity and also somehow letting it get away from him, manifesting that he does not quite control prophetic speech even as he wrestles it into language to hand on to hearers...